Psychosocial Notebook - IOM Publications - International ...

Chapter 4 • Nicola Mai
120
was a medical student staying in the home of her relatives, and was originally
from an urban environment. She had experienced meaningful
relations with her Albanian neighbours. Her uncle, however, had been
strangled with a string, while her aunt was raped by six Albanians and
has miscarried as a consequence of this].
I have never felt humiliated, or in danger. We did live our lives next to
them, but I, it may sound funny, I never noticed them. There were more
of them, we did depend on them in certain aspects. It was a known fact
that shops were in their hands, that bakeries… that everything… For
example, if there was an Albanian holiday, we could die of starvation, it
did happen. But, basically, I did not notice them much. They did not jeopardize
me directly. [(V15): Serb woman, 25, from an urban environment.
Her Albanian neighbour brought five of his brothers to testify in front of
KLA soldiers that her brother had not been in the army during the war].
I will tell you one example. I was going once with a neighbour of mine,
an Albanian, you know, every Serb has one Albanian, as they say, we
worshipped each other. He was young, 18 or 19, he used to wash my car
all by himself and I would give it to him for a ride in front of his school,
so that his girlfriend could see him, everything was cool. And whenever
I was in need of something from the city, in the part where you have only
Albanian stores, where they could hardly speak any Serbian, I used to
take him with me, he spoke in Albanian, bought stuff, arranged, fixed my
car cheaply. Once I was in a hurry, so I forgot my driving license and registration.
We were going through the Albanian part of the town when the
police stopped us. I was dirty, I hadn’t shaved for days and they probably
thought I was an Albanian, that we both were. They asked for my driving
license and registration and I kept saying I didn’t have them with me.
They probably thought I had stolen the car and when I started driving
backwards in order to clear the road, they thought I was trying to get
away. They gave me their routine, like “Who told you to start driving”
and they had their guns ready to shoot. “I’m gonna fuck your Albanian
mother now”, I think those were their exact words, only because they
thought we were Albanians, that’s my feeling. If I hadn’t started to speak
slowly and fluently in Serbian, they would have shot me right there, I
think. I think they apologized later on with something like, “We’re sorry,
but he didn’t have any documents, we thought he was a thief, he wanted
to shoot me…” although I had no weapon. I managed to persuade them
eventually that I was a Serb and it was then that I realized how those
Albanians felt when they do something wrong. And I saw with my own
eyes, in the middle of a street, a policeman slapping a guy because of
speeding or any other reason, the guy didn’t want to pay and he beat him
in front of his wife and children. He takes him out of the car and slaps
him. [(V6): Serb man, aged 33, a supervisor from an urban environment.
He had friends among Albanians and thought the police had mistreated
them, as his personal experience confirms].
My best friend was and still is (and forever will be) an Albanian girl who
lived in the same building with me, on the floor below. I was looking forward
to each Ramadan and Bairam in the same way I was looking forward
to Christmas and Easter, it was the same for her. I mean, those were